dustyDataThe games industry sucks
Alanah is a great creator. She worked for IGN as a reporter for years, then at Funhaus as a host/editor, and finally broke into games writing, which was her goal for a long time. She also hosts an excellent cross discipline gaming podcast with gaming actors/musicians/devs talking about all things gaming.
Shes seen the industry from every angle. Its telling that her conclusion as a whole is “this is fucked.”
DojanI don’t think you need that much insight to see that the whole institution is fucked.
- Rampant “frat bro” culture
- Frequent cases of sexual harrassment, and assault
- Cases of suicide
- Cases of burnout
- Layoffs like clockwork
- Often deliver rubbish products
- Frequently employs consumer-hostile and manipulative tactics
What is even the point, really? Maybe I’m an outlier but I don’t feel like the AAA gaming industry provides enough good to warrant all the crap they put their workers through, and the way the sentient wallets customers are treated.
The point is to make as much money as possible while paying the workers as little as is possible. Same as it ever was.
They could always pay us more, but we’re just supposed to be happy they aren’t sending the Pinkertons to shoot our women and children anymore, I guess?
By asking “what’s the point” I meant less “what’s their goals” and more “what benefit do they serve?”
I’d love for some big swoop to just upend the entire industry. Create better conditions for the workers. Stop the companies from stealing from artists. Have actual consequences for nepotism, corruption, and abuse of power. Like crunch and all that BS is just expected as though it is because of the job, but it’s not, it’s because of the system.
I guess the “benefit” they serve is to increase the payout % for the people at the top of the ladder and their goal is to do that until the breaking point that some higher up takes the blame and the fall with a golden parachute before landing at another company exactly the same as the last one.
Rinse and repeat until you’re Summering on a yacht? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Yeah, all that you described? That’s what a union does. points at WGA They did it against some of the biggest multimedia companies. The only people who are going to fix the gaming industry are the workers and that takes a union.
Yeah I live in a country where pretty much everyone is unionised. What I described is standard here. It could be over there too.
She’s been great for a long time. One of the few people with public comments on the industry that has a really great intuitive grasp on the business side of it.
PeachManI mean honestly it makes sense. If we assume that the average game dev is similar to the average “hardcore” gamer, then we can only assume that they’re toxic little shits 😆
She has a great deal of respect for the devs/writers/artists/workers. Its the system itself and the execs that are fucked. The toxic atmosphere they cultivate keeps churn high so profits stay high. They build a bad place that attracts bad people that stay and good people that should leave, and they dont give a fuck as long as “number goes up.”
Give the video a watch. It’s a very candid take from someone immersed in all the layers of the field.
skellenerIt’s always sucked - at least with large companies.
NobsiNope. All companies started in the 90s as groups of gamerbros. When they started to make loads of money and had to get managers cause they didnt want to do management was when it started to go down.
That’s really not at all what happened. Gaming development goes back to the 70s and gamerbro culture has almost nothing to do with history of game dev, that’s a more recent thing that happened with DOTA and the like.
Blizzard made awesome games and was led by someone who wanted to make awesome games. Eventually they gave upper management to someone who doesnt play games and now we have empty sheels
I’d really love to see this type of outrage for people with PdDs getting laid off from universities who make shit pay and teach lit classes living out of their cars. Cry me a river, tech professionals. Not that I have anything against tech professionals, etc. But, you know, it would be really nice for people to get a view of the world as it is. I’m a humanities professional, and, thankfully, doing quite well today. I was laid off in the stock market crash of 2008 because I was working at a private, Catholic university in Worcester, MA with investments. That year, they laid off 1000 workers. All of us working our asses off for a fraction of the salary those guys were making that were laid off. Sorry, but my heart strings aren’t pulled. I’ll tell them what they might have told me at the bar or something: “Sorry, bro. A door closes, another one opens.”
The solution is not for you to show contempt or lack of empathy to these people, it’s for them and you to demand better treatment from the owners and executives.
The system is fucked and it is skewed wildly against anyone who is not at the top.
I’m not showing contempt or lack of empathy. I’m showing that people on here don’t care about other workers other than the ones that work in computer-related industries, which salary-wise can afford to be laid off. Cry me a river. Your nasty response shows me that you have no compassion for workers in other industries or professions that are, on average, overqualified and make less money when they are employed. You’re the type of person that got an F in High School English class and just like video games. Nothing intelligent here in your comment. I made a real argument about things how they are about the job market. Your response is weak and not convincing me. Most of all because science is always favored over humanities in the world at large. You don’t care about anything else except the industry you are into. You’re into the video game industry. You only care about the workers who were laid off in the video game industry. Other workers that were laid off, it seems to me, don’t matter to you. You’re attentive to this news story not because of workers, but because of video games.
skulbunyBy your own admission you are punching down or sideways at best. Punch up. You see what you want to see, you aren’t the only person in the world who’s a card carrying union member here nor are you the only person who cares about workers in any non-tech industry here. Class infighting is about the dumbest thing ever.
Well, look at you! You brigaded against me and my comment, and now you’re reconsidering. I think that’s the right thing to do. You’re a good person and I just want to let you know something: Welcome to the fediverse, where brigading isn’t really a thing. You figured that out when I didn’t stand down, right? That’s fine. In my heart and my mind, nobody has to carry a particular card. What they have to do is be true and honest in their words and actions. I LOVE VIDEO GAMES by the way. I play them all the time, in co-op even. So, ummmmmmmm, what? I know what kind of fucking card I’ve got. Just got one. 12 GB NVIDIA 4070. Just so you know, we humanities people sometimes got more buying power when we get lucky, too.
Boy howdy, you sure are committed to your idiot perspective aren’t you?
What’s my idiot perspective here? My perspective is stupid. I am too dumb to understand why my perspective is dumb. Please, explain. My point of view from my perspective looks crystal clear. Tell me, please, in plain English, where I am erring.
Me hurt from lack of other people caring about bad things happening to me. Me hate people who care about other people having bad things happen to them.
I wasn’t talking about myself. I was talking about how on here, video games reign supreme. You guys worship people that work in developing video games. You don’t even care about your own professions, which could be not in the video game industry. I’d love to see you sharing news stories about people getting laid off from a place of work that is not related to video games. That was my point. You make my point even stronger because of your manner of commenting. It’s childish and autistic. I was using my own life (in the year 2008, which was how many years ago?) as an example to show how insignificant it is to this manner of gushing over unemployment in the video game industry you have, when you don’t gush over it when unemployment happens in other fields of work. You’re all really unemployed, it seems. Or you all work in the video game industry. If you were all working in a diverse range of professions, and not just the video game industry, and you really cared about workers, you wouldn’t be fawning over this youtube garbage. You’d be actually concerned, and expressing your concernes, over any and all corporate layoffs across professions. I don’t see you doing that. Why? Because you don’t care.
Please learn about paragraphs. Thank you.
So
you
have
difficulty
with
reading
comprehension
and
don’t know
what a
paragraph
is.
I don’t think you realize that video game developers and other related jobs are pretty badly compensated for the job they’re doing. Those devs are among the most skilled ones and could probably earn 5 or 10x what they’re getting now by going to work at some FAANG or big banks. They’re working here because they love video games and want to create something fun, so it sucks when you just get fired like that.
Also, it’s not because you’ve had it worse that their situation is okay, it’s fairly easy to always find a worse situation and just dismiss any issue.
I didn’t have it worse or better. I just think you only care about video games, not workers.
JackGreenEarthIndie game development works well. It’s really just that large companies suck in video games as well as all other areas, so not really news.
These companies have always used the call center style of employment.
Yeah having worked in a call center for 3 years I always find it amusing when people think these issues are related to a certain industry when in reality it’s just the core essence of capitalism calling for infinite growth in a finite market
SanctusI don’t know how to say this but corporations suck. They turn human spirit into profits and excrement. Anything led by a corporation will inevitably suck if it doesn’t right off the bat.
The stock market has to be one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made as human beings.
What even is the point? The stock market is just a ticking time bomb and when it fucks up, people lose their job and their house and anything else thats sustained by income. The existence of the stock market is a crime against humanity. You can’t even blame a single dictator for what happens to people when it crashes.
Because it makes the fat cats even richer, they couldn’t give less of a fuck about the rest of us.
FrostyGhostIt’s time the fat cats had a heart attack.
You know that their time’s coming to an end
they have children you know
Until you dismantle inheritance, the old fat cats will find a way to pass their wealth to younger fat cats.
Don’t worry, the environment has a plan
HauiAre there any tech co-ops or 100% employee owned companies? Could be a system forward.
I’m sure there are. But, at least in the states, many tech people are also right-leaning libertarians. Co-ops are unpopular with them because they want to be the kings in the castle, not equal with their peers.
Makes sense I guess. Thanks for elaborating.
Co-ops are quite rare in Europe as well. I can’t name a single tech co-op.
In fact I’d say it worse over here. In my experience stock options are a very rare kind of remuneration, whereas as far as I understand it’s common in US Big Tech companies like Google or Apple (though of course non-voting shares are a far cry from actual co-ownership of the company).
On the other hand corporate profits are taxed pretty high in many countries (for the smaller tech companies that aren’t based in Ireland). It’s 30 % here in Belgium IIRC. So at least some of the profits make it back to the people, in a more general sense.
Support independent developers! Stop buying AAA.
It's impossible to get people to stop buying AAA games, but please stop buying AAA games.
Indie stuff is way more interesting anyway, but I could never get my old lan party friends to look at them.
For me, the visuals are a huge part of gaming, i simply don’t like the style of most indie games gonfor. The “artsy” stylistic graphics, the 80’s inspired pixel graphics, the simple polygon graphic is all indie games seem to choose between these days, and in personally hate looking at it.
I bought minecraft when it was 10$ I believe. Pretty sure it was still played in the browser then.
I‘m down for this type of indie game. :)
I agree, I’m looking for immersion and story. That said, I’m also willing to wait a few months for devs to fix all the bugs they should have removed before the rushed release dates.
H_Interlinked"Choose" isn't really an accurate term to use in your comment though, is it? Obviously high-realism AAA game graphics are going to come with a high budget outside the realm of possibility for the average indie dev, unless they have some super talented people with a passion for the project working for cheap.
A lot of us are willing to make this concession or adjust expectations for an experience that has great gameplay, soundtrack, story, etc. as easily as reading subtitles to enjoy a foreign film. The imagination can do plenty of the heavy lifting.
There’s a few indie titles that are developed by one person and maybe a handful of part timers or freelance people. Turbo Overkill and HROT(Single dev working is Pascal). Most of the time, the retro art style works to the design of the game. Ion Fury uses a opensource fork of the Build Engine(Duke Nuken 3d) and leans heavily into the 90’s idea of Cyberpunk and 90’s pop culture in general. Dusk is a Quake-like, but I had more immersion in the smooth gameplay then I would in a HD game where the hardware can’t keep up with the optimized graphics engine.
Meh. Today’s realistic graphics is tomorrow’s retro graphics. If a game was fun ten years ago, it’s fun today. If it was only playable ten years ago because of the graphics, but isn’t it playable today, it wasn’t fun in the first place.
Kill_joyI would actually just settle for not pre ordering AAA games as a good place to start.
This I do not understand. I am sure a ton of people pre-ordered Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty even though we know how it launched. (And I love the game, I followed all the news, but even I could wait for a fckin day to wait for the reviews)
The strategy to this is to buy so much crap on Steam and Humble Bundle that you don’t have time to pre-order AAA games.
For example, I love Borderlands series, and I have so many games to play that I could easily wait for TTW to be on sale - lo and behold, 10 bucks in a Humble Monthly with all the DLCs, and extra 7 games with it aswell. Banger.
It baffles me how anyone can stand to preorder any game with the market being so oversaturated. There are SO MANY great games on a constant $20 or less sale rotation you'll probably never have a chance to play if you're a full-time working adult. I'm worried about grabbing a highly acclaimed title that's been out for 5 years before it fades into obscurity, and I have to stumble upon a shout-out 3 years later to be reminded of its existence. Not about some stupid launch skin bonus, or OST mp3s you'll never click open.
PyrWhat defines AAA?
Like, is baldurs gate AAA?
Or just anything from EA, Ubisoft, etc.?
Id say BG3 probably falls into "III" or perhaps AA if you count Larian as such, they certainly didnt have a large marketing campaign on par with AAA.
Larian is an unusual case. It's indie but it's huge. They aren't funded by or marketing through a bigger publishing company so IMO that's still indie. But they're hundreds of people so not really small, and BG3 can by all means be considered a AAA game because the difference in quality and scale is indistinguishable from AAA published games.
OneWomanCreamTeamI still play AAA games occasionally, but I’ve enjoyed gaming so much more since I got more selective with them.
ToTK was worthwhile, but even for the newest entry in my favorite series since childhood, (from a developer with a pretty good track record for their games) I still waited a week to see if any launch bugs needed to be ironed out.
I can’t even remember the last AAA game I bought before that.